[Reader-list] EUROPE: Integrating Islam

[Zulfiqar Shah]

EUROPE: Integrating Islam

 

How are western European countries reacting to their growing Muslim populations?

The growth of the Muslim population in Europe--currently some 20 million of the continent's 450 million citizens and increasing fast--has highlighted the differences between conservative Islamic values and Europe's traditionally secular liberalism. The demographic shift, assimilation difficulties, and debates over issues such as head scarves and the role of women in society have occasionally sparked violent clashes. Concerns about terrorism--the July bombings in London and the March 2004 bombings in Madrid--and incidents like the November 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who criticized Islam, have forced countries to reconsider how to handle their rapidly growing Muslim communities. Thus far, experts say, no country in Europe has come up with the ideal solution.

 

How have Muslims reacted to life in Europe?

Experts say there has been a range of responses among European-born Muslims. These include:

   Assimilation. Some Muslims born in Europe become secularized and adjust well enough to succeed academically and financially in their countries, says Mark LeVine, associate professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and a Middle Eastern history specialist. Some, he says, become "Muslim yuppies," join the native-born elite, and are held up as success stories for their communities. However, this group makes up only a small percentage of Muslims in Europe. 
   Integration. Large numbers of young people live peacefully in their host countries while retaining the cultural and religious traditions of their ancestral homelands. Their parents and families--often first-generation immigrants--still have a strong influence on them. LeVine says this quiet, relatively anonymous group, while likely the biggest percentage of European-born Muslims, attracts little public or media attention. 
   Rebellion. Some Muslims keep western society at arm's length, refusing to intermarry or mix with Europeans. Living in segregated neighborhoods with the food, culture, music, and television of their home countries, "they're there [in Europe] but not there," says Shireen Hunter,director of the Islam Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]. Most of these Muslims are poor and live in crime-prone neighborhoods like the British council estates or the French banlieues. Experts say that some young Muslims grow alienated from both their parents' culture and the culture of Europe and seek a sense of community and identity in conservative Islam. A small percentage of these--including, perhaps, the four suspects in the London attacks--eventually embrace terrorism. 

Which factors are exacerbating Euro-Muslim tensions?

   Terrorism. The London attacks, which killed at least 52 and wounded about 700, again put a spotlight on the threat of terror in Europe. After the Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people, Spanish authorities arrested more than 100 people suspected of links to Islamic terrorism. Several of the September 11 hijackers, including Mohammad Atta, were part of the "Hamburg cell" of radicals in Germany. In recent months, members of the Iraq-based terror group Ansar al-Islam were arrested by German and Swedish authorities and accused of recruiting Muslims in Europe. 
   Demographics. The Muslim birth rate in Europe is three times higher than that of non-Muslim Europeans, which is declining, writes Omer Taspinar, the co-director of The Brookings Institution's project on Turkey. The Muslim population has doubled in the last 10 years to 4 percent of the European Union's population. About 1 million new Islamic immigrants arrive in Western Europe every year, and by 2050, one in five Europeans will likely be Muslim. 
   Turkey. Turkey is currently discussing entry procedures with the European Union [EU] that could allow it to join the EU in 10 to 15 years. This would increase the Muslim population in Europe by some 70 million. Some experts hope traditionally secular Turks, who have strictly enforced the separation of mosque and state in their own country, will temper Islamic radicalism on the European continent. Others say the addition of so many more Muslims will push Europe toward increasing religious radicalization. 
   Cultural polarization. Many Christian and secular Europeans have grown increasingly wary of Muslim immigration. Meanwhile, some European Muslims respond to the perceived moral permissiveness of Western culture by trying "to assert Muslim culture aggressively and maintain the boundaries around Islam," says Akbar Ahmed, [http://academic3.american.edu/~akbar/INDEX.HTM] chairman of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington, DC. 

How have European states dealt with their Muslim citizens?

Generally by promoting assimilation, which has a long history in Europe. Many Europeans, who are aware of the historical repression of the Catholic Church and the divisive wars over faith that raged across Europe for centuries, see religion as a fundamentally unreasonable force, some experts say. Therefore, many Europeans don't understand why anyone would be religious and argue that governments should urge immigrants to accept the tradition of secular humanism that has held sway in most of the continent since the Enlightenment. Europeans ask, "Why do you need religion? Why can't you live like us?" says Jocelyne Cesari, a French expert on Islam who is a visiting professor at Harvard University and author of When Islam and Democracy Meet. French leaders, who enacted a ban on religious clothing in French schools in 2004, acted according to a national tradition that promotes a secular identity for all citizens, says Gilles Kepel, a French scholar of Islam and a member of the commission
 that supported the ban.

How have European countries dealt with the practice of Islam?

European countries have historically "outsourced" the funding, management, and teaching of Islam to imams and organizations from their immigrants' countries of origin, says Jonathan Laurence, visiting fellow at The Brookings Institution and co-author, with Justin Vaisse, of Islam in France: The Challenge of Integration. "Morocco, Algeria, and Turkey all have government ministries that send imams to educate their populations abroad," he says. Now, however, many European countries are trying to combat this influence and promote a more Europe-based Islamic practice. Recent efforts include the creation of Islamic Councils in France and the Netherlands to educate arriving foreign imams in European culture, the establishment of the Dublin-based European Council on Fatwa and Research, which issues opinions on modern Muslim life in Europe, and French politician Nicholas Sarkozy's proposal to use state funds to build mosques and train French imams.

Do Muslims in Europe practice the same kind of faith as Muslims in their home countries?

Home-grown imams, shipped to Europe, have tried to guarantee that they do, experts say. But leading thinkers like Bassam Tibi of Germany's University of Gottingen, and Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss-born intellectual and grandson of the founder of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, argue that Muslims in Europe must create a specific form of Islam that can coexist with European values. Tibi coined the term "Euro-Islam" to describe a type of Islam that embraces Western political values, such as pluralism, tolerance, and the separation of church and state. Ramadan, who is considered controversial in Muslim circles, has written that while European societies need to respect the Islamic faith, Muslims also need to engage in interfaith dialogue with their European neighbors. "The challenge today is to make Muslims understand you don't have to be less Muslim to be more European. You can be both," Ramadan said in a 2004 interview in Foreign Policy magazine. Integration, however, has to be thought of as
 a two-way street, says Hunter of CSIS. "Muslims need to make basic concessions to the social mores of [European] society, and society has to make room for them," she says.

Do most European Muslims want the state to play more of a role in their faith?

Many experts say no. "The majority of Muslims in Europe are very happy to live in secular regimes, and recognize that as a freedom they did not have in their home countries," Cesari says. "There already is a European Islam," Laurence says. "It means Muslims going about their business like everyone else."

Has there been a backlash against Islam in Europe?

Yes. "Almost all Western European countries have an increasingly popular anti-Muslim platform in their societies," LeVine says. Germany, France, Holland, Britain, and Italy have all seen a rise in anti-Muslim feeling and incidents in society, as well as in strongly anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant statements by politicians. Cesari says much of this is caused by Europeans erroneously linking Islam to crime. "For lots of Europeans, who associate Muslims with poor, violent ethnic neighborhoods, Islam is the cause of the problem," she says. They blame the religion and its adherents not only for social problems at home, but global trends like terrorism. Especially after 9/11 and the attacks in Madrid and London, experts say, Europe is experiencing what Cesari calls "a hardening of the discourse on Islam" on all sides of the political spectrum.

When did the recent trend of Muslim immigration begin in Western Europe? A first generation of Muslims, mostly working-class laborers, came to rebuild Europe after World War II. Many immigrants arrived from former European colonies that were achieving independence. Cesari calls these immigrants "post-colonial minorities"--Pakistanis and Indians in Britain, North Africans in France, Indonesians and Surinamese in the Netherlands--who lived "on the margins of European society in territorial, cultural, and symbolic ghettos" and stayed poor. They didn't make it in the new society, and kept a "myth of return to the home country," Laurence says.

What have their children done?

The European-born children of the first generation immigrants have been educated in European schools, are more assertive than their parents, and speak Western languages fluently. At the same time, however, this second generation has experienced barriers to acceptance by European society, including widespread discrimination. Cesari says the discrimination occurs at every level of society, from housing to education to cultural practices. Hunter agrees. "Germans still call Turks [living] in Germany guest workers," she says. "They'll say, 'You can't be German because you don't celebrate Oktoberfest.'"

Are some younger European Muslims becoming radicalized?

Yes. "They feel there's no way for them to fully integrate into society, so they want to carve out their own identity," Ahmed says. Part of this process for some young Muslims is choosing a fundamentalist form of Islam over the traditional Islam of their ancestors, says Olivier Roy, a French scholar and author of Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. "It's a reinvention of the religion, a typically born-again phenomenon. It gives a value to their uprootedness; they can say it was a benefit to lose the Islam of their grandfathers because the new form is more pure," Roy says. This process is aided by Islamist groups, some of which are funded or ideologically influenced by adherents of fundamentalist, Saudi-based Wahhabi Islam. In this manner, the frustration of poor young men is channeled into religion.

How many of Europe's young Muslims are radicals?

Roy estimates fewer than 10 percent of Europe's Muslims actively support radical Islamist causes, but says the result is tainting their neighborhoods. "When groups of young men in white skullcaps [i.e., traditional dress] go door to door criticizing people for not being faithful enough, it affects others," he says. In addition, Roy says, Islam is becoming a "protest identity," so even non-devout Muslims in some European countries are now demanding halal [religiously sanctioned] food in public venues to show their separation from Western societies. "Suddenly, wearing the hijab [the head covering devout women wear] became a way to resist," Cesari says.

How much of the recent radicalization of young European Muslims is related to economics?

Quite a lot, some experts say. "It's largely linked to the destitute neighborhoods," Roy says. Some of the suburbs, or banlieues, outside Paris that have sizable Muslim populations have a 17 percent unemployment rate, compared to a 9.4 percent national rate. These are the neighborhoods, experts say, where young Muslims are increasingly becoming radicalized. Once Muslims move out of their working-class neighborhoods and into the ranks of the middle-class, however, they tend to favor assimilation. "They aren't perceived as Muslim any more, and the vast majority isn't interested in using their religion as a social and political marker," Kepel told the New York Times in December 2004.

What efforts have European countries made to reach out to their Muslim populations?

The continent has been deluged with hundreds of documentaries, news stories, films, and editorials about Islam in the last few years, part of a lively debate about the religion's influence. Some British banks now advertise their compliance with rules governing Islamic banking. The German province of Saxony-Anhalt became the first in Europe to issue a sukuk, or Islamic bond, which complies with Quranic rules barring the payment or collection of interest. In Denmark, one of the most secular countries in Europe, the Quran is required reading for high-school students; the Bible is not. But experts say the new efforts do not necessarily change countries' generally assimilationist policies, or the attitudes of many of their people.

--by Esther Pan 


		
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